Sweet Dreams, Richie
by morethenwords122
Summary: The first time he saw her in his dreams, he was just shy of his twenty-first birthday. Seth had been in prison for about a year—and he was unbearably lonely... Part 1 of the Wicked Series
1. Chapter 1

1

The first time he saw her in his dreams, he was just shy of his twenty-first birthday. Seth had been in prison for about a year—and he was unbearably lonely.

* * *

So when Richie sees her, scantily clad in a bathing suit, her dark chestnut curls shining in the hot sun, the chlorine filled cheap motel pool water shimmering around her as the blood slowly began to pour out of her body… terrifyingly, like blood seeping out of an open wound in waves and waves of wet, fresh blood pooling around her… Well, he wasn't entirely surprised.

He first believes her to be a figment of his troubled mind, a vision of his own pain wrapped up in a beautifully young package. She can't be more than seventeen and he feels older himself… more predatory. A mixture of emotions swirls within him as he watches the young girl literally floating in a pool of her own blood… A familiar sense of apprehension and fear he always seems to feel whenever he encounters a pretty girl begins to pull at him, making him restless… But there's something even deeper scratching, _clawing_ under the surface… like a sense of completion, a strong feeling of understanding and belonging to someone… to _something_ bigger than himself.

He can feel his soul going out to her despite the underlining tension rolling around in his stomach and shoulders, making him feel like he could vomit at any moment, and an urgent need to get somewhere – to _be_ somewhere… a place… a Gecko brother's form of paradise – is calling to him, yelling at him.

 _We just need to get across the border,_ he can hear his brother chanting softly in his mind's eye. _Once we get across everything will be okay and none of this shit is gonna matter._ He shakes the thought away, refocusing his attention back on her.

Richie tilts his head slightly, his eyes racking across her barely covered body. He begins to feel another emotion creeping up on him… one more primal and instinctive than all the others he's felt so far. It's a feeling that his dream filled mind has no control over, not that he'd control it if he could. He feels a mad jolt of lust pulse through his body… pure and unadulterated… alongside, that is, a deep sense of yearning that burns his chest, constricting his breathing. The heat that's been building in his chest slowly moves towards his groin. He's half-hard and he can feel himself moving uncomfortably in his dress pants.

"Are you okay, Miss?" he hears himself say from a million miles away. His voice is distant, dull… like he's speaking into the future. His youthful voice sounds hollow and unfamiliar in such an old and damaged body.

She opens her eyes slowly, looking in his direction… but she's not quite seeing him. He feels a sudden rush of fear piled onto all of his other emotions… as though he is invisible under her gaze. He doesn't feel real as her vacant and glossy eyes roam over him, not seeing him—but right _through_ him.

The smile she sends him is world-weary, sad and hollow. Like the girl that had once been there was long gone and what he was seeing now was the ghost of a girl that had taken the place of who she once was.

There is no light in her eyes as she whispers the words… "Save me, Richie… Save me." His ears ring with her solemn words, her voice youthful and beautiful…. and deathly. More blood pours from her body, making the whole pool look like Elizabeth Bathory's bathroom tub.

"What?" He manages, terror and concern coursing through his veins, making his body hum and jump with fear.

"You have to save me, Richie," She says softly, an apologetic glint in her deep green eyes.

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. _Why is she sorry for scaring him?_

"Save me, Richie," she repeats. "Please save me." She pleads… and he feels foolish. He wants to save her… but he can't. He can't even save himself.

"I can't…" He says it plainly, hoping she'll understand. Surely she can see the blood of his own pain flowing through him and out. "I can't save anybody." He says honestly.

She tskes, as though she's reprimanding him as she lifts her head slightly out of the water. He is only being honest … and he feels a sharp ping of anger rise within him.

"You can save anybody you want, Richie," she says slowly, her body beginning to disappear underneath the blood of the water. "You just choose not to." Those are her final words as she sinks deeply into the pool, disappearing forever.

He yells for her, screaming for her to tell him her name and demanding answers to her message as he breaks through into the limelight of consciousness, still screaming for her. He feels tightly wound up, his muscles aching like he was jolted back into his body from another realm… a place in the future… from a memory that has not yet happened.

Tired, he lies back down on his sweat covered cot and lifts up his hand to the end table next to his cot, reaching for the Coke bottles he calls glasses and slips them on the bridge of his nose, pushing them up slightly. He briefly scratches his ever growing beard and begins to wonder. _Who is she and what does she need saving from? Is it a man abusing her?_

Or is it his own demons manifesting themselves into something he can understand and listen to? Is he trying to tell himself that he needs saving… or is it something more, something bigger?

He continues to think about it as he gets up and begins folding the blankets up neatly before getting dressed for the day. He thinks about it when Vanessa bursts through the front door of his shack, raging on and on about the fact that he hasn't used the visitation pass she shoved out money for so he could go see Seth in prison and about what a horrible brother he is.

* * *

And he still thinks about it three whole months later as the dream slowly begins to fade into the back of his mind and as more important things like hunger and money begin to its place… But late at night… when nothing but sorrow and loneliness fills up his brain… he thinks about her. Her image is jumbled up in his brain like a jigsaw puzzle he needs to figure out.

 _Is she lonely like him?_ He wonders as his mind becomes foggy. _Or is it something else? Something bigger?_

* * *

It's another year before he dreams about her again… and another three before he meets her face to face.

 **TBC...**


	2. Chapter 2

2

 _"Do you even love your brother, Richie?" One of the group home counselors had asked once during his youth and after his fourth foster home in two months. Her voice had been prim—curious and judgmental—he remembered… like it wasn't normal if you didn't love your twin brother._

 _"Of course, I do," he had scoffed, scowling._

 _She hummed, chewing on the tip of her ball point pen._

 _"Then why do you start trouble?" she inquired, her voice harsh and scolding. "Why do you cheat Seth out of a good and loving home, if you love him like you say you do?"_

 _He scowl deepened, his tiny fists clenching into balls._

 _He knew what this self-righteous bitch was doing; she was trying to guilt him into flying straight so she wouldn't have to deal with them, despite the fact that Seth had a yellowing bruise on the left side of his face and a cracked lip. He had burned his own father alive for beating his brother; he wasn't about to let some unknown prick do the same. He was his to protect and he had done what was right, beaten the fucker with his own beer bottle, splitting his eyeball wide open and giving him a severe concussion… and he wasn't anywhere near as sorry as this liberal bitch apparently wanted him to be._

 _He took a deep breath, unfolded his clenched hands, and looked repentant and solemn like this skank wanted him to. He said he was sorry and it wouldn't happen again. She smiled at his submission and sent him off to play with the other kids._

 _That was the day he learned how to cheat and manipulate the system._

* * *

Vanessa asks him the same question the night before their shared birthday, her voice just as prim and judgmental as that woman's had been, with a hard bite to it that she only ever aspired to use whenever she had to interact with him… and he gives her the same answer and treatment that he had given to that bitch counselor all those years ago.

"Of course, I do," He spits, his eyes narrowed and his fist clenched.

She just rolls her eyes at him before saying, "Then act it, Richard… and go see him; it's going to be his birthday too."

He just nods his head and ignores her for the rest of the night.

* * *

It's his twenty-second birthday when he decides to pull a 'Seth' and try to do a job all on his own.

It isn't because he's looking to get caught and wind up in prison alongside Seth, even though that's what Vanessa seems to think. He's just not stupid enough for that. No, it's because he desperately needs the money and his drinking buddy Diego says that the man asking for him to do the job is more than willing to shovel out more on their share of the take of the money than the job really calls for, as long as it's done quickly and efficiently … And Richie knows that he's more than capable of being both of those things, with or without Seth.

Seth's the one that needs him as a boxman, not the other way around. So Richie says 'yes', shaking Diego's clammy hand, and expecting it all to be an easy in and out job with minimal hitches to overcome… In retrospect, he supposed that he really shouldn't have been so surprised that the job went south almost from the start.

Diego was an incompetent fuckwad, who didn't know anything about making sure the premises was cleared out and accessible before Richie broke into the house. He had barely cracked the code of the safe before he heard a car head up the driveway of the mansion, and he was almost entirely sure just how close he was to landing in the slammer beside Seth.

The only thing that saves him is the fact that Richie is always innately prepared for the unexpected… a value that usually comes with being a professional thief… and he has packed an industrial drill for a quicker and easier access to the safe.

He drills into the safe and gets what he came for… three thousand dollars' worth of uncut and clean Australian diamonds… and he stuffs them carefully into the knapsack he has carried the drill in, and wipes his prints off the drill before making his way out of the second story window the safe is located next to.

He falls as quietly as he can into the rose bushes below him, stifling the sharp curse that wants to escape his throat when a thorn pricks him in the balls, and manages to hightail it off the premises before the owner realizes he's been robbed. The job is a success, like he knew it was going to be. He delivers the diamonds to the guy Diego says will be the middle man and gets their cut of the earned take…

When he sees Diego again, looking smugly happy and bragging about a job well done; after Richie did all the hard work and risked getting thrown into the clink due to his incompetence, while the asshole sat on his fat ass and did nothing, Richie's pent up anger finally comes to a head. He punches Diego square in the face, breaking his nose and knocking him out cold. Then he throws the dumb ass's take onto his limp body, taking two hundred of Diego's cut as a finder's fee, and walks away.

He's never doing this shit alone again… It's Seth as his right hand man or nobody.

* * *

Richie puts five hundred dollars into Seth's commissary account the very next day and writes him a note telling him to spend every penny on what he wants, not what he needs… but Richie doesn't go to see him like he told Vanessa he would.

 **TBC...**


	3. Chapter 3

3

He finally dreams of her again two nights after his twenty-first birthday.

* * *

 _"Richie…"_ she whispers to him that night.

His eyes were beginning to grow heavy with the promise of a respite from a week-long progression of sleepless nights. He is so out of it that he doesn't even flinch away when she sits down next to him, her slight weight making a small dip in his cot.

 _"Richie…"_ she whispers again, her fingertips curiously brushing against the slight curve of the right side of his cheekbone not buried in the pillow. He welcomes the strange yet somehow familiar voice, hoping her melodic vocals will lull him into the deeper throes of slumber.

She continues to stroke his cheek in a soothing motion, and Richie nearly groans from the contact, a sharp tingling sensation enveloping him and connecting with everything that he is. It's been so long since someone has touched him without some kind of reservation or purpose; a touch so _unconditional_ and _fearless_ that awakens something inside of him that he hadn't even known was there. Her smooth skin against his taps into an unexplored part of himself… a part that actually craves the comfort of skin on skin contact and what it can provide for him—a part of himself that he hadn't even realized that he missed, making him feel free, alive… and somehow loved.

Seth use to be giving with his hugs before their father died, always pulling him aside to show how much he loved Richie… how much he appreciated the sacrifices Richie had to make in order to protect him from their father, but now… The only time Seth gets close enough to touch him is when he thinks that Richie is on the edge of a panic attack, moments away from blowing a good score, and even then, it's only in brotherly pats or reassuring shoves. Vanessa never touches him unless Seth urges it… and Richie can't even remember if their father's had ever touched him… No one has ever touched him the way she was…

"What's your name?" he mumbles sleepily, his voice husky and his mouth hanging open a little, his eyes still drooping, and his fingers itching to touch her back in the haze of his tiredness. " _Who_ are you?" he finally asks, the question floating around in his head for weeks now, ever since he had first dreamt of her… the image of her sinking beneath the blood of the water— _and away … forever out of his reach_ —festering slowly within him until it's become a full blown obsession, feeding his _need_ to know everything that he can about her, trying to encompass her every thought like she has his.

 _"I am what you want me to be,"_ she says back, her words soft as velvet, a balm to his fried nerve endings. She smiles down at him, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear. He smiles back lazily, his body unconsciously scooting closer to hers, wanting to be melt underneath her warmth and light. _"As for my name…?"_ she whispers softly, her hand inching closer to his hair as she leans into him, the tips of her lips ghosting against his earlobe, sending small shivers down his spine…

 _"That will be revealed in time."_ She sighs, her hot breath blowing against his clammy skin, cooling him down to the bone. He sighs against the intimate touch as she kisses his earlobe, her hand trailing down his cheek and onto his back in a sweeping motion, rubbing semi-circles in the middle of his back. _"Now sleep…"_ she commands gently, and he has no choice but to obey her as he falls fast into the deep abyss of sleep—a plateau of scratchy, grainy images of endless roads and humid nights with bright, white smiles and small fingers that caress his manly hands against the gear shift of a car wait for him on the other side.

 **TBC...**


End file.
